Shirley MacLaine to talk freely

Say you could ask Shirley MacLaine anything. Just think of the possibilities ...

Did Alfred Hitchcock torture you? What was the most outrageous thing you ever did while hanging out with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack? What did you and Maggie Smith talk about on the set of "Downton Abbey" between takes? How often did you want to kill Jack Nicholson while shooting "Terms of Endearment"?

"You'd think people would ask those kind of questions," said the 79-year-old showbiz legend, whose upcoming performance at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts includes a Q&A with the audience at the end. "I tell them they can ask me anything they want about the Rat Pack or Nicholson or Jack Lemmon or the love affairs."

She laughed. "Nope. They almost always ask me about my books. Then it turns into a kind of semi-comical mini-seminar" on spirituality and the afterlife. (MacLaine became famous for a time as an avid explorer of metaphysical and supernatural subjects, including extraterrestrials and reincarnation.)

Her show, called "An Evening With Shirley MacLaine," isn't the kind of song-and-dance spectacular she dazzled audiences with in previous decades.

"I'm not interested in dancing like that anymore. Now I do a little bit of everything. It's a really good compendium of not only my films but my personal life, travel and I guess you could say my beliefs. Yes, I get into spirituality."

Why is the audience so interested in MacLaine's otherworldly pursuits these days?

"I think it's because everything seems to be falling apart," she said with a sigh. "That's my best guess."

While the show has an overall structure, MacLaine likes to keep things loose, steering it according to her mood, the audience's interests and whatever her memory dredges up.

"I talk about different scenes and moments in my life. Different people: Prime ministers and presidents and politicians and all that. Frankly, I never know what I'm going say. Sometimes I find myself remembering things from long, long ago that I had never recalled before."

Film and video clips, of course, are a crucial part of the evening.

"I can stop what's on the big screen whenever I want with a remote and start talking about whatever strikes my fancy. What I like is to be spontaneous with the audience. I love the collective energy that's created."

You'll see excerpts from MacLaine's Oscar-winning performance in "Terms of Endearment." Chances are she'll be drawing from her Academy Award-nominated performances as well, including "The Apartment" (1960), "Irma la Douce" (1963) and "The Turning Point" (1977).

"When I started thinking about putting things together, I didn't know what to pick," MacLaine said. "I chose the pictures that got nominated or won stuff. But that's only part of it." She shows a few lesser-known films as well. "But I avoided some of the crowd-pleasers that didn't please me."

Gaining 20 pounds on the Hitchcock diet

Born Shirley MacLean Beatty in Richmond, Va., the energetic redhead showed an early aptitude for dancing. But weak ankles forced her into other entertainment realms, including theater.

Shortly after high school, MacLaine went to New York, where she soon found a job as an understudy in the first Broadway production of "The Pajama Game." She replaced the lead, thrived in the role, and was discovered one evening by film producer Hal B. Wallis, who signed her to work at Paramount Pictures.

MacLaine has been working ever since.

Her breakthrough film role came as an ingénue in Hitchcock's "The Trouble With Harry" (1955). Despite his famous reputation for abusing his starlets, she remembers Hitch as a surprisingly easy man to get along with, up to a point.

"If you were blond, he was tough. I'm a redhead. The hardest thing about him is that I became his eating partner. He insisted on me having every meal with him during the shoot. I gained 20 pounds!" If you watch the movie closely, you can tell which scenes were shot the latest," MacLaine said. "My cheeks got fuller."

A conversation with MacLaine is filled with hilarious and fascinating information about Billy Wilder's strict yet trusting directorial style during "The Apartment" ("We started with 29 pages of script, and Billy just watched Jack Lemmon and me work and wrote it as we went along"), James L. Brooks' brilliant script for "Terms of Endearment" ("so wonderfully structured") and possible conflict next season between her character and Maggie Smith's Violet Crawley on "Downton Abbey" ("I told them, 'Let's make our friction a real gunfight at the O.K. Corral – more sparks'"). She also dropped a bon mot or two about her busy life and the inevitabilities of age.

When asked why she doesn't include dancing in her show any more, MacLaine laughed. "Time decided that. I can't do it anymore. No way. Oh, I still do my workout every day. But I could no more do a dance class now than jump up and start flying. Oh well. I don't like exercise anyway. Never have."

MacLaine has learned how to deal with the spiritual questions. "People are asking for simple advice. They want to know, 'How should I live my life?' "

She has come up with an analogy she thinks is useful.

"I tell them, 'Life is show business. Every morning when you get up, you're making decisions like what wardrobe to wear, what script to follow. Makeup, hair, attitude – everything can be determined by you. You're in control of more than you think. You can do what you want.'"